Bulletin de liaison et d'information - Institut kurde de Paris

REVUE DE PRESSE~PRESS REVIEW~BERHEVOKAÇAPÊ~RwISTA
,
STAMPA~DENTRO DE LA PRENSA~BASlN ÖZETi
The dismissive approach to Kurdish del' its command. Today the
--'~ range and power, ordered
grievances began to change in the mid-'80s P,K.K. claims to have a hardcore
~ his guerrillas to attack tarwhen
unrest flared into a concerted terror
force of 5,000 highly
~ gets in 28 EuroPea'n cities,
campaign conducted by the Kurdish Workers'
trained guerrillas operating
~ specifically Turki$h govdedicated
Party (P.K.K.), a militant Marxist group inside Turkey, backed by as
~ ernment and tourism of-
to wresting Kurdish autonomy many as 150,000 militiamen
-: fices and banks in Germany,
from Ankara. In the years since then, the plus an estimated 2 million
Switzerland, Britain
P.K.K. has emerged, by most measures, as sympathizers among the 12
and France. The blaze of
the most lethal terrorisFguerrilla organization
million Kurds in Turkey's pop-
',.violence last July, accom-
in the world.
ulation of 57 million people.
p~nied by shouts of "Kur-
In its ruthless disregard for human life, The P.K.K. can count on a
distan lives!;' caught the
the party is similar to Peru's Maoist Shining multimillion-dollar income
attention of the world.
Path movement today and Cambodia's that buys it relatively sophisticated
weapomy, including
French govern-
This month the
MASTERMIND ABDULLAH
Khmer Rouge of the '70s. The first victims
OCALAN: Known as Apo, he
of P.K.K. terror were not Turks but Kurds, high-tech communications
ment rounded up
is said to have "the
thousands of countryfolk-men, women gear, and a network of agents compassion of a cobra" hundreds of Kurds
and children-who were executed because and supporters in the Middle
suspected of being
village leaders had hesitated to throw in East and Europe. Much of the money is members of the P.K.K.; last week,
their lot with the P.K.K.
raised through so-called contributions-in Germany outlawed the P.K.K. on
'''''hile some Kurds turned to the guer~ some cases plain extortion-from the estimated
its soil.
rillas out of fear, others joined their ranks
1.5 million Kurds working in Eu-
Fittingly enough, the name
in reaction against the Turkish military's rope and from Kurd-owned businesses Ocalan means revenge in Kurdish.
bloody reprisals, including the bombing or that are forced to pay a "revolutionary The guerrilla leader got the name
partial destruction and sometimes evacuation
in memory ofhis father who, Ocaed
of Kurdish mountain hamlets suspect-
Ian claims, was killed in an uprising
of giving aid to the P.K.K. Support also
against the Turks in 1925. A brilliant
derived from the fact that the P.K.K.'S campaign
student, Ocalan won a schol-
put the Kurdish question on the front
arship to the prestigious faculty of
pages and made it Turkey's most compelling
political science in Ankara, the
issue.
training center for Turkey's top
When the P.K.K. launched its first major
civil servants. He quickly sought
offensive from bases in Syria in 1984, it had
a few hundred ill-equipped irregulars un-
44
tax:' Millions of dollars more come from
the drug trade, where the P.K.K. is thought
to control30% to 40% of the flow ofheroin
from Afghanistan, Iran and Lebanon
through Thrkey to Europe.
If the Kurdish insurgency is recognized
as the biggest challenge facing the Turkish
government, one man can be held chiefly
responsible. He is Abdullah ("Apo") Oca-
Ian, a 44-year-old revolutionary born of a
landless family in the heart of
what is now the embattled
Kurdish country. Ocalan is described
by one journalist who
met him repeatedly as "having
the compassion of a cobra:'
From his headquarters in
Damascus, Ocalan is said to
wield uncontested authority
over the P.K.K. Last March he
declared "a unilateral ceasefire"
and called on Ankara to
open a public discussion of
Kurdish rights. The government
responded by limiting
military operations, but the
truce ended abruptlyon May
24 with a massacre that enraged
the Turkish army. P.K.K.
commandos attacked a bus in
the southeast and executed
the 33 unarmed army recruits
aboard by shooting each in the
face. According to Unal Erkan,
the supergovernor of Diyarbakir,
Ocalan switched tactics because
his P.K.K. forces, were
suffering heavy losses and he
needed to show his strength.
Three weeks after breaking
his own truce, Ocalan
vowed at a press conference
"the most ferocious" campaign
against the Thrks and, in
.,.,.'.";,~,.,:, a demonstration of the P.K.K.'S
"~:~~~
~.,